Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) imposes devastating medical and economic consequences. Severe HAIs lead to extended hospital stays, lasting side effects and ultimately increased costs and risks of mortality. Treating these infections costs the health care system billions of dollars every year.
A good hand hygiene practice is important to reduce transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to patients. For instance, a recent study showed that an increased duration of hand washing from 10 to 30 seconds reduces bacteria remaining on hands by 100-fold. However, recent data shows that on average U.S. healthcare providers clean their hands less than half of the times they should.
Today most hospitals in the U.S. still rely on direct observation to measure hand hygiene compliance, which is costly, labor-intensive, time consuming, subject to observer bias, and only captures a small sample size of hand hygiene events.